One of the hellish bits of bureaucracy I have had to participate in over the last year was getting my project approved by the university’s Research Ethics Board. And I do understand why. Over the years there have been some horrifyingly unethical projects enacted in the name of academia and it is always in a researchers best interest to think through all the possible ramifications her work might have - BUT THE FORMS ARE SO PAINFUL TO FILL IN! And then the revisions! My god the revisions.

But the good news is my research project has been approved for this summer which means I will be hitting the road again to join historical armies, chase heritage chicken out of vegetable gardens, and talk to teenagers about their jobs acting out our collective history!

"...the search by living historians to live a storied life, and the un-self-concious understanding they project upon the reader-authors of such lives, is subverted but the reflexive consciousness that determines the very conduct of reenactment." (253)

Just one of the hundreds of quotations I have collected to help me develop an understanding of what is and isn't 'authentic'. (Tip - no one agrees and there are a million different definitions)

I had an idea during my early morning work-out related to a book I have been reading. Then I told my friend and he made it sound like real research:

In discussing this process Schneider measures displacement across space and time. I want to discuss, instead, negotiations among competing metrics of authenticity - how a particular site or event neglects some forms of realness for the sake of others. These competing metrics of authenticity are implicit in the practice themselves rather than in any personal definitions I might have.

Acontinuation of last post's theme of finding the language to describe what my role is within my research project. What the heck am I doing?...

Rebecca Schneider writes in Performance Remains that her presence on the Civil War Reenactment Battlefields “…meant trouble for any attempt at fidelity that could not allow for significant slant” (44). She is using Emily Dickson to define slant here. Dickson writes, “Tell all about the Truth but tell it slant - Success in Circuit lies” (qtd 44). Or come at it in a circular, off-centre, roundabout way - or non-linear. Or, infelicitously (inappropriate, unsuitable, indiscreet), a word Schneider uses in an early explanation of theatricality vs. performativity. She also refers herself as a ‘feminist from the future’ and now I will to. That is really all. I just read a long bit of interesting but dense theoretical writing and thought I should think about it for a bit.

Two years ago I made Arcade Fire’s “Reflector” my alarm. It is not important why I picked it or kept it but I will say that listening to the same song, first thing every morning, has finally paid off. David Bowie (SpaceAngel) sings on the track and I often sing along with him - “thought you agreed to the resurrector turns out is was just a reflector” - and today a little rolling ball of though finally dropped into its hole. The re-enactors push so hard to be authentic and serious with their work because they are trying desperately to resurrect something - a place, a time, a moment, a story - but no matter how detailed they make their clothes, weapons, campsites, battles they can only reflect the past. Of course this is very obvious. The important part for me are the words - resurrect and reflect.

As I edit my proposal for “Energizing the Past Through Performance” I have been thinking, in a way about reflections, or reproductions. The material I collect during my research is not historical but rather documentary. I record myself participating in re-enactments, or other people demonstrating or performing history. The re-enacment is a reflection, my recording is a reflection and using the recording as material of the recording would be a reflection…. of a reflection of a reflection of a reflection. And so we are back to Arcade Fire.

This also makes me think of Walter Benjamin and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproductionin which he explains the idea of aura and how it is lost or at least altered at the moment of reproduction. Does historical re-enactment have an aura? I suppose if you think of it as a reproduction the aura of the original is missing - lost to time. But if you think of the re-enactment as art in an of itself then it has an aura of its own.

I am incubating a very, very short abstract right now for a workshop at CATR. It is only 150 words with a little bit of extra room to describe the historical material I would like to bring to the workshop. I am working on the questions above but this kind of brevity is a real bitch!

Anyway from Rebecca Schneider's Performing Remains "...we are not entirely comfortable considering gestic acts (re)enacted live to be material trace..."(39). Yeah. What she said. I don't have a letter, or old photograph that I want to create a research performance. I have the memory of my body participating in a 1812 Battle reenactment. I have photos of my body doing this but mostly a memory. Schneider points to the privilege of literature in the archive in that documents are considered evidence or a record and that often the reenactment are seen as lesser, or not as 'real'. Her book serves as counterpoint to this privileging of the written, tangible or linear. And I agree with her. Reenactment is a useful and productive record of history...but should you explore a performance through performance?

Writing does not come easily to me. Getting my writing to a Graduate level was one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I don’t think I have devoted the Galdwellian 10 000 hours to this skill but I am surely close to 5000. I have learned to let go of the ‘perfect’ draft, having a thesis before I write, the benefit of free-writing, the agony and pay-off of setting a timer for 25 minutes and never taking my fingers off the keyboard even if all I am writing is “this is an essay this is an essay this is an essay”, I have learned that I start writing all my essays, papers, chapters, lecturesfrom the middle. It is the because it took so long for me to learn this things that I like talking to people about their writing and writing processes.

Yesterday afternoon, for four hours, I sat with a rotating bunch of 25 students from a first year drama class while they talked about, struggled with, and drafted their final term essay. I watched one of them realise that the next step was to give me HER analysis of a play she saw and that it was her ideas, her thoughts, that I was interested in reading. I had several conversations with smart, thoughtful students who wanted to write too much, had to many ideas - how wonderful is that! To find first year student with too much to say for a 1800 word essay! I assured them all the thinking, and writing about the too-big idea was not a waste and would only add to the shorter, more well contained essay they would no doubt write. I was happy to suggest to a student that he should just start writing the bit he was most interested in and trust that a thesis would find him (...the more he just wrote about what he saw in the production he was analyzing and what he thought it meant the clearer, more interesting and more complex his ideas became - which was so useful for him to realize and satisfying for me to watch). I also had to contend with the anxiety and panic that so many students in first and second year have about the formula for writing that gets beaten into them in high school. The hamburger structure and three body paragraphs are gospel and they are not able to let them go. They don’t trust me that now that they have learned the rules they can loosen their grip a bit. They look at me in terror when I say things like - “write as many paragraphs as you need”, “use as many words as you need to write the essay”, “I don’t know, how many quotations will your argument need to prove it?”. And I get it. I know that it would be so much easier if there was a quadratic equation equivalent for these students. It takes bravery to write, to edit, to write again, to revise, and to finally let someone read it.

Talking about essays with my students is my favourite part of the TA gig. It benefits them, but it also benefits me. I reminds me what the beginning of the process looks like and that I have made progress. I makes me feel useful to be able to show others what I have learned. And in this case, it might have lead to a writing group next term. More than one of these students said they would be happy to sit with me, once a week, and write. I might just take them up on it. And since I won’t be their TA next term…they will have to make time to listen to me talk about my writing too.

I don't hate marking. Most of my colleagues think this is nuts but I think marking can be an effective way to communicate with my students. As a TA I have a limited number of contact hours and commenting on written work gives more more opportunities to talk to students about their ideas, their writing, and to identify problems. I mark all the time because I have my students do lots of low stakes writing for me. I make comments and ask questions in the margins of this work rather than assigning grades so that we can start conversations about writing and content before they write something worth 15 or 20 percent of their final grade. I like this kind of marking. I want their first marking experience with me to be constructive but non-evaluative. This optimistic view on marking does get tested, however, in the face of 36 first year papers about the same play.

My students's writing has the same issues that all new-to-university writing has - a thesis statement that is more a list of interesting things they noticed rather than an arguable claim, and prose that is needlessly complex because of the misguided notion that university writing should be 'fancy'. Most of my students have only been in university for 6 weeks and they are struggling with new ways of learning. They've been given writing formulae drilled into them by well meaning high school teachers and they cling to those old rules for dear life in the face of new ways of writing. I am also used to their expectations when it comes to grades. The "70 is a good mark - no really" speech is always a shocker to students whose grades have slowly inflated from Grade 9-12. But I teach this class every year. These things don't bother me. What gets me frustrated is the all the stuff I went over with them. I explained quote integration to them and offered a hand out. I talked about MLA, posted a link to the guidelines and showed examples in more than one class. I said over and over that they didn't need to clog up their essays with phrases like "The famous Greek play Agamemnon...", or "The World renowned playwright Aeschylus..." because if the play is on the syllabus it is important - no need to sell me on the importance of Greek Tragedy, kids! I reminded them over and over than they had to state the line numbers of the passage they were analyzing in the first paragraph so I could follow along. It is these things being overlooked, or ignored that get to me. It is in these instances that I feel like I am shouting into a paper bag. And yes, I know, this will be a lifelong frustration if this whole Prof. thing works out - but still.

So, yes, I do like marking. I like when I can see a student take to heart a comment I made on a lecture response, free write, quiz, or essay and apply it to future work. It is thrilling (yes, thrilling) when the penny drops for someone and she realizes that 'writing fancy' not only prevents me from understand her but makes it harder for her to write. And when they come and see me and say that my commentary helped them understand exactly why they got the grade they did - so so satisfying.

I am getting tired of this article. Not forever or anything, I have enjoyed the process of turing a talk into an article and exploring and furthering my arguments but...I kind of want to put it in a drawer for a week. My deadline is self-imosed so I could do that if I wanted to but something about learning to meet my internal deadlines appeals to me. That is something they should put in the literature for graduate school - all deadlines internal! Extensions will always be granted! We never want you to get out of here! But I digress. Anyway, 5 pomodoros so far....

Also - it is such a good idea to document all your citations when you write your essay. I think citation management is like data back-ups. You know you should do it but until it actually happens to you.....

Academic Lockdown for 10 days might have been ambitious. Maybe if I had help on the domestic front - groceries, washing, tub scrubbing. Or maybe I should have planned out and dealt with those task before I started? Either way, I did not make it into a U of T building yesterday. I did read a chapter of The Experience Economy in an effort to find a compelling quotation for my introduction. Nada.

I was more successful today. I have 5033 words and I like most of them. I have managed to re-address and expand all the sections my very smart friend recommended take a second look at. I did have to book an appointment with a librarian friend to get the citations under control. How do you cite a Heritage Minute in MLA? I will find out tomorrow at 2.00pm.

I did not post yesterday, I know. As I discussed on day 9 I work at UTM on Wednesdays and Fridays and although I was able to get some of my own academic business done on Wednesday yesterday was all talking about student essays and not my own. Which is fine. I like talking to people about their essays. I really do. It is not only a useful way to help them clarify their thoughts but I always think hearing about other writing methods helpful (although I must admit the first year uni student methods of Wait, Freak-Out, Start the Night before! has no appeal). That is why there is no 7.

However, in 6 news... I did 5 pomodoros today. If I work on weekends I get a pastry breakfast from Blackbird in Kensington and today I had a delicious lemon/cranberry thing. I also smoothed out some sections I wrote on Thursday and got to work messing up some paragraphs from the speech version of the paper that do not work anymore. I also did some reading - Fair Play by Jenn Harvie which lead me to another book about economics to add to my Lit Review list. I should really stop being surprised by how relevant economic theory is for my work but I still find it...odd. Anyway, I am off to Indigo to buy The Experience Economy by Pine and Glimore since it has gone missing from the U of T library system.

I teach on Wednesdays and so the academic lockdown was tricky. I had a lecture to attend, office hours to hold and material to prepare for Friday's classes. I am in my UTM office 9-5. My goal for the paper was to read over what I wrote yesterday and to summarize my progress (if any).

Progress Report:

I re-wrote a good 500 word chunk and I am mostly happy with it. And I slotted back in several 'killed darlings' from the editing process that happened in May to make the paper 20 minutes long. I also fell into a bit of a rabbit hole looking for a quote about souvenirs I thought I had in one of my notebooks. I ended up spending some time in the stacks (about 25 minutes) and the afternoon combing though some new literature on authenticity. Tomorrow will be when it becomes clear whether this was useful or not because.....

Tomorrow:

I have all day to write. I could be in that library from 8-5 if I wanted to. I don't want to, but I could. Instead I am going to do 5 hours or, 10 pomodoro. I want to restructure and fill in two major sections (the close reading of the beer ads/heritage minutes, and the heritage performance protocol)

I have a friend who likens the start of the school year to being shot out of a cannon. I would agree and now that I have come to kilometres away from where I started, dazed, confused and covered in powder-charge I can safely proclaim - HOLY SHIT WHERE DID SEPTEMBER GO?? It is this feeling that is prompting a tactic I have used in the past for things like comps - Academic Lockdown. This is how it works:

- pick a deadline

- work everyday (even weekends) until the deadline

It is very simple, effective short term strategy and I will be using it to edit a paper I presented in May at the CATR conference into an article to submit for peer review. I have already done a great deal of work toward this goal - a very smart friend read it and made suggestions, another very smart friend listened to me talk through those suggestions and made notes of what I said, I read several book sections to help back up my shifting arguments. What I need to do know is WRITE THE DAMN THING. So I am adding another criteria to this round of Lockdown - accountability.

I will be heading to Fort William in Thunder Bay this weekend to participate in an 1812 Battle re-enactment. I wrote about it several weeks ago when I was having a musket dilemma. I have two very exciting updates. 1) Musket dilemma solved! I have a meeting with the armourer and costumer on Friday. 2) I finally had the project approved by the Research Ethics Board! Yay. It was very stressful.

Anyway, in honour of my first foray into Historical Reenactment please enjoy this link.

This is not Fort William. This is a scene from the Trinity Pageant in Trinity NFLD.